The online classroom of UH 300-002, Andy Duncan's fall 2010 science fiction seminar in the Honors College of the University of Alabama.

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

my shallow affair with science fiction

When I first signed up for this class, I thought to myself, “I don’t really know much science fiction.” But after our first class discussion, I realized that science fiction has been a presence in my life for almost as long as I can remember. My parents were teenagers in the 70s when Star Wars first came out. We had the original trilogy on VHS, which I naturally watched all the time as a kid. I also remember “late nights” as a kid watching the syfy channel and getting scared to death from some of the movies and The Twilight Zone. Once I randomly picked up Timeline by Michael Crighton and three days later was finished with the book and hoping that sort of “time travel” would soon be available to me. Then in high school I was convinced my mother had set up a Big Brother surveillance system to keep me in line after I read 1984. Mostly these days every time I hear the words “science fiction” I think of Rocky Horror Picture Show… “science fiction… double feature…”

When asked to define science fiction, I struggled to find a single definition that would explain my opinion of science fiction in its entirety. Science fiction, to me, is one of those forms of media that continues to grow and change to the point that there really is no true definition for it. And isn’t that sort of thing that “science fiction” writers try to convey anyway? That everything is possible, and there really are no boundaries and definitions?